Mike Buchanan

Gordon Michael Alexander Buchanan (born 8 December 1957) is a retired businessman and men's rights activist, who founded and for two separate periods has led the organisation Justice for Men and Boys (and the Women Who Love Them) (J4MB), which formerly operated as a minor political party, in the United Kingdom.

Buchanan was a company director for Link Procurement Services Ltd from 1999 to 2010, and also for Legal Procurement Services Ltd from 2005 to 2008.

He also worked as a consultant for the Conservative Party, but left the party in 2009 after David Cameron announced his approval of all-women shortlists for selecting parliamentary candidates, accusing Cameron of being "relentlessly pro-female and anti-male" in his policies and comments.

In April 2012, he began the 'Campaign for Merit in Business' arguing against increasing gender diversity in the boardroom (GDITB).

The campaign submitted written evidence to a House of Lords European Union Sub-Committee on the Internal Market, Infrastructure and Employment which was investigating ‘Women on Boards’.

The sub-committee also heard from the campaign's Research Director, Michael Klein.

The sub-committee found that "[a] more balanced board [would] be able to tap into the wealth of available talent in the labour market, provide a broader spectrum of ideas, better reflect a company's customer base, and improve corporate governance.", but went on to say, "that quotas should not be resorted to until all other options have been exhausted."

Later in the same year, Buchanan appeared before the House of Commons Business, Innovation and Skills Committee's inquiry, 'Women in the Workplace', alongside former UKIP local election candidate Steve Moxon, sociologist Catherine Hakim and business executive Heather McGregor.

At the Committee, Buchanan described himself as the campaign's chief executive, and saying that in November 2012, the campaign consisted of ten members.

In written evidence to the inquiry, he cited five longitudinal studies, which he entitled 'Improving' Gender Diversity on Boards Leads to a Decline in Corporate Performance: The Evidence.

Buchanan also began the Anti-Feminism League in 2012.

A year later, its website, called Fightingfeminism, which academic Alva Träbert described as "mak[ing] its opposition to feminism explicit" and based in part on Buchanan's "experience at the boardroom level of multinational corporations", was merged into the Campaign for Merit in Business and the political party, Justice for Men and Boys.

The political party Justice for Men and Boys (and the Women Who Love Them) or J4MB for short, which Buchanan led, was founded on 6 February 2013, and registered with the Electoral Commission on 21 February 2013.

Buchanan said he established the party because "the state is anti-male" and considers the male sex to be "pretty much subhuman".

According to him, "legislation is routinely drafted to advantage women and disadvantage men" while "boys are being relentlessly disadvantaged by an ever more feminized education system".

He also formed such groups as the Anti-Feminism League and Men Shouldn’t Marry.

J4MB described itself as "the only political party in the English-speaking world campaigning for the human rights of men and boys" and as being anti-feminist.

The academic Ana Jordan noted that Buchanan "has been openly vitriolic about feminism and feminists".

"Feminism is a hatred, and it should be a badge of shame," Buchanan has said.

According to him, "It's a very well documented feminist objective of 40 years to destroy the nuclear family," and feminism "is a deeply vile, corrupting ideology and the idea it's a benign movement about gender equality is dangerous nonsense."

He says, "All feminist narratives are one or more of the following – conspiracy theories, fantasies, lies, delusions or myths."

J4MB issues awards for "lying feminist of the month" to female journalists, "toxic feminist of the month" and "whiny feminist of the month", with recipients including Laura Bates and Caroline Criado-Perez.

The Observer columnist Catherine Bennett wrote in 2015, "The treatment of one such J4MB target, Laura Bates, founder of the Everyday Sexism Project, is such that it might easily be mistaken for stalking, at least since headlines such as 'Will someone change Laura Bates's diaper' on a blog, were followed by Mr Buchanan, the would-be public servant, bothering the audience in a bookshop where she was about to speak."

J4MB's website includes a link to an article entitled "13 reasons women lie about being raped".

In its manifesto for the 2015 general election, the party explored twenty areas in which it believes the human rights of men and boys in the UK are being violated.

In this document, the party advocated compulsory paternity tests regardless of the mother's marital status or her testimony about who the father was, cutting funds intended to encourage women to enter science, and cutting the abortion limit for women whose pregnancy threatens their mental health from 24 to 13 weeks.

Parents should be able to send their sons to schools with only male teachers because female teachers are assumed to favour girls in the awarding of marks.

They also advocate that men should be able to retire earlier than women, because males work harder and die younger.

The section on sexual abuse concentrates on female offenders, and the issue of rape and assaults annually committed against women in the UK is avoided.

The higher level of male suicide is blamed on the state for favouring women over men.

According to The Week, the manifesto "quotes extensively from the Daily Mail, Wikipedia and anti-feminist blogs including JudgyBitch.com".

Journalists Ellen Halliday and Kim Darrah write that in the manifesto, "Buchanan also encourages men to take 'the red pill', a reference to the ideology of incels – extremists, usually men, who express extreme hostility and hatred towards the people, usually women, who they blame for what they believe is their involuntary celibacy".

Writing about the party's manifesto launch and the media coverage it generated, The Observer columnist Catherine Bennett wrote, "Before long, many more voters should be familiar with his organisation's gormless/whiny/lying feminists of the month announcements and enthusiasm for personal attacks, to a point that eclipses its more persuasive concerns about, say, male suicide or judgments in the divorce courts."

Laura Bates has written that the party "achieve[d] a significant sweep of media coverage", and that "In his new status as a politician, Buchanan was also given free rein to opine unchallenged about the 'myth' of the glass ceiling."

Bates notes, "Although much of the coverage was critical, the very fact that such quotes appeared in the national press in the context of a political leader running for office helps to provide MRA ideology with a sense of legitimacy and acceptability, while also serving as a gateway for potentially susceptible converts, who might go on to access some of the movement's more extreme online spaces as a result."

Buchanan relinquished his role as leader of the party to Elizabeth Hobson in May 2020, but re-assumed it after Hobson resigned in March 2021.

In April 2022, it was announced that the party was changing its name to the Children & Family Party.

In November 2022 the party reverted to its original name, though the Electoral Commission requested the dropping of the "and the Women Who Love Them" portion.

J4MB was de-registered as a political party on 31 March 2023, and in June 2023, its website stated,"J4MB is no longer a party, but its mission remains unchanged."

Buchanan continues to lead the organisation.